The siege continued in the streets, on the roofs of houses, in the cellars for twenty-one days; the old building of the University burned like a hellish bonfire; and it was only after 54,000 out of 100,000 had perished that the unhappy garrison were driven to accept honourable terms of surrender. Then, as Thiers relates in his history: "On 21 February, 1809, 10,000 foot-soldiers, 2,000 horsemen, pale, emaciated, broken, filed out before our pitying soldiers, who proceeded to enter the unfortunate city to find its ruins filled with putrefying corpses. Zaragoza ("Saragossa") Zaragoza, which we misspell "Saragossa," a corruption of Cæsarea Augusta, existed 2,000 years ago; it was refounded by the Romans in 25 B.C. The town is comfortably situated on the Ebro, but the water is so brackish that the natives have a saying, We eat our drink." There are two Cathedrals in which services are held for six months alternately. One existed over 1,700 years ago, a severe and sombre pile, very grand and impressive in the gloom of its interior. Entering from the sunlit square we seem at first to be in absolute darkness. Then gradually we make out the extraordinary pavement, composed of big squares of yellow marble crossed by black and white lines forming strange geometrical designs. It was the Rheims of Aragon, where most of her kings were crowned. And all sorts of stately ceremonies took place in the Middle Ages. Knights used to kneel here all through the night, keeping watch before admission to their Orders, and in 1487 a strange mystery play was acted in the presence of Ferdinand and Ysabel, about which we find some odd notes of expenses in the Cathedral archives: "Seven sous for making up the heads of the bullock and donkey in the stable at Bethlehem; six sous for wigs for the prophets; ten sous for six pairs of gloves to be worn by the angels," and so forth. Catalonia § 6 Catalonia, on the north-east of Spain, is the other entrance from France at the eastern end of the Pyrenees, and here again we do not find the characteristics of the country we expected. For the greater part it is almost a wilderness, with few trees or buildings scattered about on scanty plains. But it is the Spanish Lancashire, and Barcelona, its capital, has been called the Spanish Manchester. The people are the most enterprising and industrious in Spain, at the same time grasping and generous, sober and honest, austere and revengeful, excellent soldiers and sailors. If we desired to generalise about Spain we might say that the Catalonians are her Scotsmen, the Andalucians her Irish, the Asturians her Welsh, and the Castilians her old-fashioned English. The Catalonians despise the rest of Spain, indeed they proclaim themselves to be not Spanish but Catalans, and have a language of their own related to Provençal and Limousin, which extends south as far as Valencia and the Balearic Isles. Catalonia has always been the centre of discontent. Here revolutions and military pronouncements have come like sudden storms, right down to 1923, when a sort of Fascist State-stroke was started by the military governor of Barcelona, peacefully upsetting the Constitution and established Government. The Catalans always go to extremes in religion and politics, combining absolute belief in all the picturesque legends of the Middle Ages with democratic ideas sometimes bordering on Bolshevism. Barcelona Barcelona is full of life and animation; the centre of its life is the Rambla, a series of broad avenues recalling the Paris Boulevards except that the footwalk is in the centre beneath arching plane trees with a carriage drive on either side. The Rambla is 1,100 yards long, running in a straight line from the port. At one end the fashionable folk disport themselves from the cool of the evening far into the night, many of them in the lightest dresses; the other end is more democratic, with a bird market full of canaries and a flower market blazing with heliotrope and all sorts of sub-tropical blooms. It is not so long ago that agricultural labourers from the countryside might be seen disporting themselves here in gorgeous mantles of scarlet and blue and gold. The port has a dangerous entrance, but is larger and more commodious than all the thirteen harbours of Marseilles put together. Everybody who goes to Barcelona makes a point of visiting Montjuich, a beautiful excursion through hedges of wild aloes, to enjoy a magnificent bird's-eye view of the town with its Oriental flat roofs, courtyards with orange trees and palms, cloisters and staircases outside all covered with arabesques. The interior of the town is full of mean streets, with all the mystery of age, but suddenly it presents a time-worn archway and we find ourselves in a vast quadrangle with gay fountains and trees weighed down to the ground by golden fruit-the Cathedral Cloisters, where stately canons stroll about reading their Mass books, heedless of the crowd of over-polite beggars, noisy children and noisier geese. It is an old Catalonian custom to keep geese instead of watchdogs on the farms, and geese have been kept here for generations to guard the Cathedral treasures. The chief fountain is called "The Fountain of the Geese,” and they enjoy the freedom of its waters, presided over by a bronze knight and a horse which spouts water from its nostrils. The Cathedral, which many consider the most beautiful and wonderful in the world, was begun in the year 1298. A Wonderful Cathedral Exquisite as is the outside of this Cathedral, nothing in the world can surpass the beauty and impressiveness of the interior. Poets have sung of religious atmospheres and "dim religious light," but none can appreciate them thoroughly unless they have been to Barcelona. At first it seems very, very dark, with the faint lights filtering through the small panes of richly stained glass of deepest purple, blue and red, giving mysterious gleams and shadows, most beautiful of all at sunset, amid the many slender pillars. The dignity and solemnity of the atmosphere, as we kneel in some remote recess and listen to the great booming notes of the organ! And below the organ, the colossal head of a hideous Moor is suspended, not an unusual decoration in Catalonian churches; it had been used in battle to encourage Crusaders. The gloom of the building adds mystery to all the strange monuments, each with its romantic story. The Liceo is larger than the Scala of Milan or the San Carlo of Naples, and ranks very high among the opera houses of the world. The chief boxes are private property and cannot be hired. Though Barcelona is the Manchester of the Spanish Lancashire, it has none of the gloom and offensive ugliness of most manufacturing centres. The cotton, silk and wool mills are all outside the walls, and most of the mill hands as well as waggoners, wharfingers, and seafarers live in the suburbs. A Fine Climate The climate of Barcelona is one of the most agreeable in the world. It rains only sixty-five days in the year, frost is almost unknown, as is proved by the luxuriance of the lemon trees which perish when the thermometer registers twenty-nine degrees; the parks and gardens are full of pepper trees, aloes, heliotrope and roses, and there are always refreshing breezes even in the hottest summer. The neighbourhood of the city, however, like most of Spain, has desert characteristics and can be unpleasantly hot. Innumerable lizards run about over the sandy rocks, and here the deadly tarantula is found, the spider in whose honour the Neapolitans have founded a wild dance. The legend is that once upon a time a woman danced irreverently while Christ was passing by, so He turned her into a spider with a guitar marked on its back, and decreed that everybody it bit should be compelled to go on dancing for the rest of their lives. The Sacred Mountain Monserrat, the sacred mountain of the Catalonians, rises wild and jagged from the plains of Barcelona, a glorious vision of pinnacles, spires, turrets, sugar-loaves, pyramids of rocks, almost too wonderful to be real. It used to attract 60,000 pilgrims a year and is still widely venerated. A statue of the Virgin was found here in 880, and a hermit named Guarin was set to guard it. He fell in love with the Count of Barcelona's daughter, and when she resisted his overtures he cut off her head. The Pope imposed a penance that he should walk and feed like the beasts and never utter a word. So faithfully did he carry out this penance, that he was presently turned into a wild beast, which was caught by the Count while hunting and brought alive to a banquet. There a child exclaimed, “ Arise, Guarin, thy sins are forgiven thee," and the hermit resumed his shape. He then searched for the Count's daughter, who was found alive after eight years' burial with only a red rim round her throat where it had been cut. She became Abbess of the Convent of Monserrat, which consists of eight storeys on a terrace amid a cataract of rocks. There are numbers of amazing grottoes and caves and thirteen hermitages. Behind the monastery is a garden of deep red roses which, we are told, were white once upon a time, but changed colour when a drop of the Saviour's blood fell upon them as they bloomed on Calvary. Beautiful Monserrat, far more beautiful than other shrines in Europe and not much more difficult of access, is it not strange that it should remain neglected by British pilgrims? North of Barcelona, near the French frontier, there is a remarkable festival at Figueras, known as the Procession of the North Wind. It appears that in 1612 there was a great epidemic, and the people had the happy thought of going in vast crowds to the shrine of Our Lady of Requesens, five hours away in the mountains, to beg her to send the North wind, which soon came and dispelled the plague. This procession has continued every year at the end of May and lasts for three days, one to go, one to remain in the mountain, and one to return. The fortress of Figueras, now a penal settlement, is one of the most remarkable in Europe, built right into the rock whose shape is an irregular pentagon. It is about 7,000 feet round and possesses bomb-proof magazines and arsenals, barracks for 20,000 men, and stables for 500 horses, all wonderfully contrived. Quaint Gerona Between Figueras and Barcelona, Gerona deserves to be visited as a specimen of really ancient Spain. It is difficult to imagine anything older and quainter than this picturesque remnant hugging itself in desolation and silence with its white balconies all covered with flowers, its Moorish arched windows with their marble pillars, and the beautiful three-arch bridge over the River Oña. It has been described as without trade, manufactures, books or monuments of any kind, but the Cathedral is remarkable if only for its extraordinary width. The great fanes |